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Sunday, February 15, 2015

Sri Lanka is the key to India's interests

India's
relief, if not joy, over the outcome of the Sri Lankan elections that
saw the exit of Mahinda Rajpakse is barely concealed. In recent years, there was a sense in New Delhi that Sri Lanka was slipping out of Indian hands. But
before the celebrations get too rowdy, we should be aware that the
foreign policy of a mature democracy like Sri Lanka is not made by
individuals, but is based on interests.

We
should make no assumptions about the manner in which the incoming
Maithripala Sirisena government will deal with areas of our concerns -
the treatment of the Tamil minority and the growing Chinese influence in
the island.

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena will improve ties with India

Emergence

India’s
refusal to intervene in the civil war which pitted the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) versus the Sri Lankan Army, more or less
decided the issue in favour of the latter.

Rajiv
Gandhi’s assassination and the loss of over 1,000 Indian Army personnel
in the 1987-1990 period ensured that India would remain out of the Sri
Lankan equations till the LTTE was obliterated.

The
Sri Lankan victory over the Tigers in May 2009 had many consequences,
none of them good for India. The land was devastated and the Sri Lankan
Tamils, India’s “natural allies” left leaderless and disempowered.

Second,
the Rajpakse family consolidated itself politically in the island and a
year later, in 2010, Mahinda won his second term as president.

Third,
China emerged as Sri Lanka’s “all time friend” by providing not just
military aid to Colombo in its hour of need, but also help in deflecting
global pressure on its leadership for accounting of the human rights
violations that took place towards the end of the war with the LTTE.

According to UN estimates as many as 40,000 civilians may have died in the final months of the civil war.

Since
the end of the civil war, Sri Lanka has received some $4 billion worth
of loans and smaller amounts in grants and aid from China. In terms of
aid and grants, Japan still remains the biggest donor to Sri Lanka and
in terms of grants India is number one, having given an estimated $350
million in the last three years in terms of grants, but the Chinese
connection is especially useful since it comes without strings.

Chinese
trade with Sri Lanka has grown sharply in recent years, doubling
between 2008 and 2012 from $1.5 billion to $2.7 billion and is now
second only to India, despite the fact that China and Sri Lanka do not
yet have a FTA. China has emerged as a major investor in Sri Lanka, with
some 70 per cent of Sri Lanka’s infrastructure projects being funded by
Chinese banks.

Infrastructure

Their
most famous is the Hambantota deep sea port, the new international
airport in Mattala, and a cricket stadium being built in Rajpakse’s
constituency.

In
Colombo, too, the Chinese are in a joint venture to expand the port.
The government may also be considering a project for a Chinese company
to establish an aircraft maintenance centre at Trincomalee.

The
Chinese probably see Sri Lanka as an important port of call for its
Maritime Silk Route idea of creating ports, highways and railroads to
ferry trade from China to the far parts of the world. There is a
historical resonance here in that Sri Lanka was an important port of
call for the 15th century Chinese Admiral Zheng He, who visited it
several times in his voyages between 1405-33 and is also reputed to have
defeated and captured a Sri Lankan king.

Sri
Lanka is a sovereign country, and it must do what it views as best for
its national interests. Promoting trade and receiving investment and aid
from various countries, be they China, India, Japan or others, is
unexceptional. Colombo is aware of the value of getting a powerful
player like Beijing to offset the gravitational pull of New Delhi in the
South Asian region.

Given
Sri Lanka’s proximity to us, we cannot help but worry about things that
could have implications for our interests. Foremost among these are
maritime interests, particularly sea lanes leading out of our east and
west coasts, as it is Colombo, which is the largest transhipment port
for Indian container cargos.

Facilities

There
is no indication, as of now, that China intends to establish military
facilities in Sri Lanka. These will not threaten India, because they are
easily vulnerable to Indian interdiction, but they will certainly be an
irritant.

Communal
peace in the island is no less important an element for us, seeing how
we got sucked into the civil war in the mid-1980s. Events in Sri Lanka
have an important resonance in Tamil Nadu, something which no government
in New Delhi can ignore.

Given
India’s position in the Indian Ocean vis-à-vis China, the challenge is
not military. For the foreseeable future, the Indian Navy will be more
powerful than its Chinese counterpart, at least in the Indian Ocean. The
challenge is economic. As the Chinese economy grows, so do its
commercial interests in the Indian Ocean.

But
if India wants to be seen as a power in its region, it needs to sharply
step up its game as a manufacturing and trading nation. In an article
in July 2014, Sri Lankan scholar Saman Kelagama pointed out that India’s
trade with its South Asian neighbours was $ 17 billion, while China’s
amounted to $ 25 billion. Geography does favour us in our relations with
out South Asian neighbours, but we need to sharply up the economic
content we put in.

The election of a new government in Colombo provides New Delhi a great opportunity to reset its relations with Sri Lanka. Both
countries need to set aside the contentious past and see how they can
construct a 21st century relationship based not only on economic ties
and the awareness of the need to understand each other’s security
concerns, but also of the fact that both countries are vibrant
democracies where the people have the last word.